Group Dynamics Workshop - University of Manchester

Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning

Group DynamicsWorkshop

Louise Goldring


The workshop

• Part of a series (‘EBL and Facilitation Skills’ and ‘Designing Triggers’) so this workshop will not look specifically at those aspects in details

• It WILL focus on group work; particularly setting it up in order to achieve positive group dynamics and spotting potential problems before they occur

• It will use your experiences and expertise

Every technique we use in the workshop can be adapted and adjusted for your own needs


EBL in brief!

• Learning driven by research – uses our natural curiosity

• Student-Centred Learning, self-directed learning– taking ownership of the learning process (the ‘how’), and sometimes of the content (the ‘what’)

• Facilitated rather than taught – ‘lighting the fire’ instead of ‘filling the pot’

• Usually emphasis on group work

• Ideally based on the ‘real world’ – a real life problem/ scenario and/or approach to solving problems

• Students gain both generic skills and subject content & skills


Some types of EBL

Projects and Research,

often bibliographic

Small-scale empirical

investigations

Problem-basedLearning (PBL)

‘messy problem’

Task-basedLearning (TBL) ‘crisp problem’

Research-basedapproach to projects

Fieldwork or case study

Discovering answer to a scenario

chosen to cover specific content/skills

Devising solutions to a scenario

chosen to cover specific content/skills

How well do your examples or others you know of fit these categories?

????


What students say about EBL:

You are actively involved in your own learning and

control most aspects of it, the content which you learn

is better retained, rather than the knowledge you acquire

from lectures

Helps to stimulate learning; Encourages more discussion of learning with other students; If other

students have covered stuff in more detail then you know you

have some extra work to do!

It pushed me to research grammar in my own time - I can still

remember the work I did rather than forgetting what teachers tell you


Part 1‘Be prepared’

Or

Dealing with group problems before they occur!


• In pairs:

– Introduce yourselves and number yourselves one and two

Number One:

– Describe a positive experience of group work you have had

• Were there specific factors that influenced this?

(e.g. group mix, clarity of task, facilitator etc)

Number Two:

– Describe a negative experience

• Were there specific factors that influence this?


Talking about group work

• Get all the baggage about group work out in the open!

• Encourage groups to think about the specifics rather than making sweeping statements

– If you liked group work, why?

– If not, why not?


Group work – dealing with resistance

• Introduce yourself to the group

• As a group discuss

– Do you feel any personal resistance to group work? Why do you feel like that?

– Nominate someone in your groups to make a note of these points for later


Student experiences

The session would have gone no

differently if the students had not been

there

The group work was fun but irrelevant and no conclusions were drawn as to the point

of it

From my experience, its an

'every man for himself' situation.


Setting up group work – the big questions

• Why are you asking them to get into groups?

• How will they form groups?

• What will they do when they are in them?

• What will the outcome be?

Before asking your students to work in groups make sur e you know the answer to these questions

TELL THE STUDENTS WHY!


Conscious Competence Model

Taylor, W. Department of Homeopathic Medicine, Nati onal College of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2007


Why do group work?(Selling it to students!)

• Be careful of generic sounding phrases e.g. “it will help you learn better”

• Be careful of sounding patronising e.g. “it’s for your own good”!

• Make it specific to the particular project e.g. not why you’re doing group work but why you’re doing THISgroup work

• Make it relevant to the participants

– How will it improve their skills

– How will that make them more employable/better at their discipline/more able to work with others in the future etc…


Forming successful groups

Two features are essential to a group:

A common identity - usually a common purpose - for all its members

Interaction between the members allowing for the development of shared attitudes and feelings, some emotional involvement, a minimum set of agreed values or standards.

For many groups there is a third factor - successful groups feel they are moving forward in some way.

Carl Rogers (2002) about groups (Teaching Adults OUP: 143)


Getting into groups• Personal experience is that 4 – 7 members works

• There is no ‘right’ way to put students in groups!

• Decide on the purpose of the group work and which aspect is more important and form groups accordingly

– E.g. if creating a ‘common purpose’ is most important then ask groups to pick the topic they would most like to work on and form groups that way

• Other ways to consider include

– Randomly assigning people to groups

– Ability based

– Letting people work in their friendship groups


Creating the right environment

• Compare the two photos, in your groups, and answer the following questions for each:

– What is happening in the group?

– How do group members feel about each other?

– How would you facilitate this?




Creating the right environment

• Encourage an environment where groups can talk freely (physically and mentally!)

• Think about whether you want your groups to have roles (e.g. scribe in first photo)

• Think about where you fit into the group dynamics and make sure you’ve made that clear to groups


Creating the right atmosphere

• One way to do this is by forming ground rules that are meaningful to the group

• Imagine you are beginning work on a project together as a group. Using your table’s list of reservations about group work, from earlier:

– Take each point on the list and form a ground rule for your group out of it

This ensures that the ground rules formed are relevant for the group’s needs and anxieties

about group work


Break

Please sit with a new group when you get back!


Part 2

‘Managing group work’


Icebreakers…



Icebreakers

• A good way to give groups a chance to get to know each other and have a practice

• Top tips

– Make it relevant (to participants and the material)

– Make them interact

– Make it a starting point


Designing Icebreakers• Work in a pair

• You have 15 minutes to design an icebreaker based on context you’ve been given

– You can use any of the resources available around the room

• Think about:

– Relevance of your icebreaker – what are you trying to do?

– Encouraging communication

– Resources on the day - what do you have access to?


Theories of group development

• Tubb’s, Fisher’s and Tuckerman’s

– Linear theories of development

• Tuckerman’s (1965) is most well known

– Forming

– Storming

– Norming

– Performing

– Adjourning or Mourning (added in 1977)

• Can be simplistic, group development is rarely linear in real life


Poole’s (1983) Small Group Development Theory

• Task track – process by which group accomplishes goals

• Topic Track – Specific item group is discussing

• Relation Track – Interpersonal relationships in the group

• Breakpoints – Switching from one track to another

• This model allows for the complexity of group work and acknowledges that many things are going on at once in a single group situation


Identifying potential group development problems

• Each table will have a group work scenario. Imagine you have set the project for your students.

• As a group, using the poster boards in a flow chart style

– Map out the processes the students would go through to achieve this task

– On top of this process map, plan out where the potential problem stages are and how you would avoid or deal with them

• Use the different colours to mean:

– Yellow – student task

– Pink – potential problems

– Green – tutor/facilitator solutions

– Orange – time frame (if relevant)


Generic example of the flow chart

Session 1:Students receive the project outline, are put into a group and

allocate tasks

1 week

Session 2:Group comes back together to reviewprogress and fill in

research gaps

A group are anxious/unsure

about working together

Facilitator suggests group forms

ground rules basedon these anxieties

One group member hasn’t done the work


Self-regulating groups

• Make sure groups know who is responsible for what and what your role is, as the facilitator

• Encourage groups to be reflective about the processes they go through, individually and as a group

– You could use learning logs for this

– Remember Poole’s theory and address the different tracks

• Include some feedback/formative assessment

– This could come from you to the whole group, you to individuals or peer to peer


‘One thing I’ll try is…’

• What one thing will you take away from today?

• Discuss it in your groups.


Finally…

• Evaluation form

Help us to improve the workshop

• CEEBL Online – Facebook and web pages

‘CEEBL – University of Manchester’

If you’re interested in talking with peers about EBL and facilitation please join and use the discussion boards

THANK YOU!


• Will Taylor, Chair, Department of Homeopathic Medicine, National College of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon, USA, March 2007 from http://www.businessballs.com/consciouscompetencelearningmodel.htm

• Carl Rogers (2002) about groups, Teaching Adults OUP: 143

• Tubbs, S. (1995). A systems approach to small group interaction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

• Fisher, B. A. (1970). Decision emergence: Phases in group decision making. Speech Monographs, 37, 53-66

• Tuckerman, B. (1965) Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 63, 6, 384-99

• Poole, M. S. (1983). Decision development in small groups III: A multiple sequence model of group decision development. Communication Monographs, 50, 321-341

Documents

Group Dynamics Workshop - University of Manchester